South Korean Supreme Court orders Japanese firm to pay compensation for Korean wartime forced labour

The NSSM will have to pay about US$ 88,00 to Lee Chun-sik, a survivor of forced labour in a steel mill. Lee, who is in his 90s, heard the sentence in his wheelchair. Shinzo Abe is against the ruling.

Seoul (AsiaNews) – South Korea’s Supreme Court has ordered a Japanese steel company to pay compensation for using forced labour before and during World War Two.

Japan ruled Korea with an iron fist from 1910 to 1945, stifling the local culture and forcing many Koreans into forced labour or sexual slavery.

Today's ruling closes a 21-year battle by four Koreans against Nippon Steel & Sumitomo Metal (NSSM).

According to the Court, NSSM should pay 100 million won (about US$ 88,000) to each of the four claimants. At present, only one is still alive, Lee Chun-sik, 90, who attended the trial in a wheelchair.

Two South Koreans had initially brought a case before a Japanese court in 1997 seeking damages and unpaid wages for forced labour at steel mills owned by a predecessor company of NSSM.

Japanese courts dismissed the case, saying their right to sue had been extinguished by the 1965 treaty which saw Seoul and Tokyo restore diplomatic relations and included a reparations package of about 0 million in grants and cheap loans.

But the victims – along with two others including Lee – launched a separate action in South Korea in 2005, and in 2012 the Supreme Court in Seoul ruled that the company was liable.

After the ruling, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and his foreign minister, Taro Kono, expressed their opposition.

According to official South Korean data, around 780,000 Koreans were conscripted into forced labour by Japan during its 35-year occupation, not including the women forced to work in wartime brothels.

• japan
• korea
• forced labour
• compensation
• supreme court
• ruling
• japanese imperialism